Speed Reading Lounge proclaims 7 Speed Reading™ software by eReflect the top software for 2015. If there’s one site dedicated to the skill of speed reading that’ s Speed Reading Lounge; it helps people understand the significance of speed reading and offers them tips and how-tos on improving their reading skill so that they can learn more with less effort, and in less time.

Speed Reading Lounge recently published a detailed, comprehensive list they’ve named “Best Speed Reading Software for 2015.” 7 Speed Reading™ by eReflect topped the list with its unrivaled set of features, technologies, and benefits.

The Speed Reading Lounge top 5 list for speed reading software is as follows:

The Speed Reading Lounge editor used his detailed review to focuses on the fact that 7 Speed Reading™ is a popular and renowned speed reading tool. 7 Speed Reading provides a surefire way to improve reading efficiency through expert-designed lessons, activities, and interactive games that are fun to practice with. As the editor notes, this is something consumers and software editors know very well, and have known since the first release of this popular software by eReflect.

The program helps people improve their reading habits through 7 distinct reading strategies and techniques that first eliminate bad reading habits and then help the reader adopt more time-efficient and comprehension-promoting ones. The reviewer states that 7 Speed Reading™ is the go-to speed reading program, saying that it is “[r]ecommended by thousands of students and professionals who have tried and tested it. The quality of videos and exercises makes it an effective guiding tool, making it superior to its competitors. It is beneficial for anyone at any age. Family and friends can take advantage of this program as there are no limits to user accounts.”

For the Speed Reading Lounge editor, eReflect’s software is without peer. Its winning combination of features, functionality, and state-of-the-art activities and tools ensure effortless and quick improvement of anyone’s speed reading skill.

“Ultimate Typing is a polished and highly effective typing software application that typists of all ages and skill levels will find beneficial. The software is designed to teach you basic keyboarding skills and then help you improve your typing speed and accuracy once you have grasped the fundamental concepts. Ultimate Typing does this through a winning combination of step-by-step training lessons and video instruction. An equal focus on accuracy and speed ensures that you gain well-rounded keyboarding skills, and appealing typing games make the software as engaging as it is effective. That’s why we gave this software our Top Ten Reviews Silver Award.”

Here are Toptenreview.com‘s list of criteria in reviewing the most updated typing software of 2015:

Typing Training 9.6/10

This typing software combines touch-typing activities with detailed video instruction. At the beginning of each lesson, a video instructor introduces a new typing concept and demonstrates how to perform it. This instruction is followed by numerous typing exercises to help you develop that particular skill. The formula is simple but highly effective.

Ultimate Typing boasts a number of features that will make your learning experience effective and enjoyable. To make sure you get the most out of its lessons, the software employs a technique known as adaptive learning. This means the software continually tracks your progress to customize your learning. For instance, if you perform poorly on a lesson or exercise, the software prompts you to repeat it until you attain a certain skill level.

Ultimate Typing provides excellent reporting features, so you know exactly how well and at what rate you are progressing through the application. Two essential stats to know when you are using any typing software are your accuracy percentage and words per minute (wpm). The application continually tracks both, as well as your adjusted wpm rate. This is an adjusted formula in which your wpm rate is reduced by the number of typing errors you make.

Help & Support 10/10

If you run into any problems while using the program there is a system in place that lets you report it immediately. You can also contact customer support directly to resolve any issues you may have.

Ultimate Vocabulary™ is getting a makeover, and it will be ready in time for the new year! eReflect has been revamping Ultimate Vocabulary and providing it with a super user-friendly, sleek appearance and a wide range of new features and capabilities.

A revamped user-friendly interface

eReflect is proud of its user-friendly Ultimate Vocabulary™ interface. Creating educational software for children and adults is a challenge and eReflect has found the recipe for a learning environment that’s user-friendly and fun to practice with. The new Ultimate Vocabulary™ interface is sleek, intuitive, and has all the core practices and features in prominent places on the menu.

Cloud-based

Taking advantage of cloud technologies, Ultimate Vocabulary™ is keeping up with the latest trends in e-learning that call for cloud integration for smoother, more efficient learning.

As a result, the brand new Ultimate Vocabulary™ is cloud-based, which means that you won’t have to download any bulky files onto your device. You’ll simply enter your access and license details through the cloud and have instant access to all of its features and tools.

Being cloud-based, Ultimate Vocabulary™ 2015 offers users the ability to create their account and access it from anywhere, from the classroom, the office, or their home. Ultimate Vocabulary™ offers its range of features, activities, and games with the convenience of the internet, but without the distracting ads and slow-loading websites. It’s all in the cloud.

Personal profiles

Ultimate Vocabulary™ 2015 takes personal achievement one step further by allowing users to create personal profiles and use these to track their progress, set goals, and earn success points for every practice and game they complete. The addition of personal profiles makes practice a more personal matter as each user can know at any time how much progress they’ve made. You can even share your scores with friends on Facebook.

Collecting success points and sharing scores on Facebook

An exciting new feature in Ultimate Vocabulary is the ability users now have to collect success points for every practice milestone they reach. Every game, activity, or exercise they finish will earn them points. These statistics are shareable on Facebook so that users can show off their learning progress with their friends and loved ones.

Ultimate Vocabulary™ 2015 retains all its well-loved and immensely popular features and tools, and it’s also bringing in compelling new games and activities. With the 2015 version of this vocabulary software, you will never run out of practice material, no matter your age or learning goals.

eReflect has been preparing Ultimate Typing™ 2015 for some months now. Today, a completely revamped typing tutor offers even more games, activities, and advanced features to make learning to touch type a fun experience for all.

A Cloud-based Ultimate Typing™ Experience

The brand new cloud-based Ultimate Typing™ is equipped with the latest tools, features, and capacities to make learning even more efficient and pleasant.

Ultimate Typing™ 2015 is entirely cloud based. This means there are no heavy downloads, no re-installs for new versions, no limited access from a single location.

The Ultimate Typing™ interface is cloud-accessible for every user, from anywhere. Software updates will be instantly implemented and the user will always have the latest version to practice with. Being cloud-based also means no ads to distract your practice sessions. You’ll also like the fact that you can enjoy fast, responsive software that uses the latest cloud technology to promote your learning.

Social Media Sharing

eReflect’s software products are notable for their compelling approach to learning. Every activity and game is fun to practice with, and every aspect of the software makes learning a pleasurable experience.

Today, eReflect is introducing social media integration for its Ultimate Typing™ 2015 software as a way of encouraging users to practice more, and then show off their results on Facebook.

Users can create a unique Ultimate Typing™ profile where they can check their practice history and results, as well as share their practice scores with their friends on Facebook. This will be appealing for younger users who will want to do better at their practice to keep improving their scores and sharing them with others.

Practice Gamification

As if the activities and games weren’t fun enough, now eReflect introduces success points, a new feature that lets you collect points each time you complete a practice session. This gives an extra incentive to practice because you know that the more you do the more success points you will collect – and the better you’ll look to your friends on Facebook!

New Games and Exercises

The 2015 Ultimate Typing™ has been enriched with even more fun exercises and games so people have plenty of practice material to train with.

This year, learning to touch type with great speed and accuracy will be a piece of cake. A feature-packed Ultimate Typing™ 2015 will help you become efficient at keyboarding and reap all the benefits of fast, accurate typing.

Ultimate Vocabulary™ 2015 is the most recent (and admittedly most fun) version of the vocabulary building software. Apart from frequently-praised features like being cloud-based and enabled for social media sharing, Ultimate Vocabulary™ has another appeal: it comes packed with fun, addictive games.

By playing only a couple of games per day, you will find yourself mastering your new vocabulary without much effort, and having heaps of fun at the same time. Technology’s great, isn’t it?

Crazy Clues

How well do you know your vocabulary? Crazy Clues is an addictive vocabulary game you won’t get enough of. The game offers a few letter clues for each word, but then you have to figure out the whole word. If you get stuck, don’t worry, because you can get a hint to get your brain going again!

This is the perfect game to brush up on new words you’ve mastered by emphasizing their spelling.

Crossword

An interactive word game you will want to play time and time again. Clicking on a empty square will give you a hint for the word across and down the puzzle. As far as this game is concerned, you’re as good as your word definition knowledge!

Unscramble

How fast can you spot a word that’s all scrambled up? Find out with Unscramble, a fun vocabulary game that’s bound to be your next favorite vocabulary game. The faster you figure out the word, the more hints you earn for subsequent rounds. The game offers you a bit of help by giving you the word’s definition.

Word Finder

Another compelling vocabulary game, Word Finder dares you to identify a list of words in a matrix of letters. The words can be aligned vertically, horizontally, backwards and forwards. Let the word hunt begin!

Flash Cards

Another classic vocabulary-boosting game, Flash Cards help you truly get a word’s meaning through repetition and with its definition as your only clue. You can adjust the speed to make the game more challenging!

Hangman

A new take on another classic word game, Hangman lets you guess the right word by only giving you the word’s definition. You have ten shots per word before your poor man is hanged.

Word Recall

A classic vocabulary game that will help you improve your vocabulary retention is Word Recall. Read the word’s definition and choose the correct word from the list.

Spelling Drill

You never truly master a word until you know how to spell it. Make sure you are the orthography master with Spelling Drill, a fascinating game that urges you to pay attention to word orthography for more balanced and complete vocabulary knowledge.

Vocab Match

This is a challenging but very amusing game. You must match the right definition with the right word to win the round. You have six different words to get right per round.

Vocab Memory

If you think memory has nothing to do with vocabulary knowledge, think again. Vocab Match tests your vocabulary recalling power by letting you see a word under one card, then challenges you to find the matching definition under another card – hopefully, before you forget that word’s meaning!

Is there some scientific rationale behind our reading habits and predilections? Why, for example, do you sometimes find that you can’t even finish a book that critics and your friends alike say they couldn’t stop reading?

Reading is a deeply mental experience people engage in on an individual, more than a social, level. A person reads for pleasure, for knowledge, for entertainment, for mentally escaping. But what’s the one factor that makes it impossible for some readers to put a book down? Is there even one single reason that is common to every reader?

In fact, there are many reasons why people get hooked by a book. Even if a book initially disappoints a reader, readers do sometimes keep reading. There are several reasons:

They’re curious to find out what happens in the end.

They dislike the thought of leaving something unfinished.

They have faith the author will not disappoint them in the end.

They’re in the middle of a series, and have to read this book before the next one.

They think ending is what tells if a book was worth it or not.

GoodReads.com users cite these and others as the main reasons why they often feel they have to finish a book they’ve started. However, for some people these rules simply don’t apply. In fact, book abandonment rates are soaring, as another book list on GoodReads.com reveals.

Book Abandonment

Looking at the GoodReads.com abandoned book shelf, you quickly see that a book’s best-selling status is not a trustworthy index as to the books’ acceptance by readers. So while a book might have a groundbreaking storyline and a compelling anti-hero, not everyone will like it.

This explains why readers might have enjoyed J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but not the style she adopts with her adult-oriented novel, The Casual Vacancy. It also explains why classic novels like Moby Dick are not to everyone’s liking, much less the range of best-sellers found in airports around the world.

The most cited reason why we have the urge to put a book down without finishing it, according to GoodReads.com users, is a slow beginning or a non-engaging writing style. Not liking the main character, and books that have a weak plot, are two other popular reasons cited in comments on the site.

Other reasons given by people who’ve abandoned popular and classic books range from a hero’s immorality or character incongruence, to a “stupid” plot, and even bad editing of the book, especially in ebook format.

Ultimately, book reading is a truly personal experience. In fact, mood plays a vital role as to what reaction a reader will have to a given book at any given time. If you’re not in a particular mood or even stage in your life you may not like a book that would otherwise become your personal favorite if read a few years before, or later. A teen version of you would interpret Catch 22 differently than you would as a 45-year old, true? Your book selection can even change depending on the time of day or year.

The advantage of rereading books is that you know you won’t be disappointed. This is why many people seem to frequently return to old favorites, and even books that they read as children: for the extra layer of meaning and for the satisfaction of knowing they’ll enjoy the book to the very end.

These days it seems as if anyone can become a self-published blogger or online writer. It only takes a word editor and basic writing skills. Or does it?

Yes, there are bloggers who’ve been blogging for over two decades now. There are people who are leading experts in their field, and blogging about what they know comes naturally to them. But what about the rest of us, the small and medium businesses, the freelance professionals and the solopreneurs who wish to run and maintain a blog? Is it feasible to become a blogger if you’ve never really had a way with words?

Becoming a blogger is a process that assumes that you:

Love and know your subject

Have excellent writing skills

Have a marketing plan and stick to it no matter what

People who are passionate about and experts at what they do will have no trouble finding topics to talk about on their blog. You’ll find that especially if you’re a leader in your niche market, you will see how quickly people will become dedicated blog readers.

However, when it comes to writing skills, you won’t keep those readers if your English isn’t in tip-top shape. Yes, typos and misspellings do happen and people will forgive them or ignore them occasionally, but if you fail to abide by simple 4th grade grammar rules, this will harm your blog and the reputation you’re trying to build around your brand.

If you want to start a blog, ensure you first brush up your writing skills — especially spelling and vocabulary. Even if at first you’re only using text messages or a Twitter feed, make sure you know the meaning of the words you’re using, and that you’re spelling them correctly. Proper English and good grammar will never go out of style. By ensuring you write professionally in every medium, you’ll create a stepping stone towards writing blogs that will (potentially) go viral.

Bloggers who are fanatically followed and read by their communities are the ones who have self-improvement and self-education as their top priorities. These are people who are able to contribute new ideas, introduce new perspectives, and find new ways to solve a problem or unveil an ignored factor people couldn’t see before.

That being said, ensure you are active in your market so that you know what you’re writing about. Learn about the latest developments, see what’s trending, and take note of what is falling in popularity. Learn new words and concepts introduced in your market and in the wider social discourse as well. This way, your writing will reflect this relevancy and radiate the self-confidence of a knowledgeable, expert blogger.

Finally, remember some basic rules for blogging:

Write in a conversational tone. Use “you” a lot to make the blog post more shareable and personal.

Storytelling is a great hook. Use this technique to intrigue readers into staying on the page.

Write compelling content. Use numbers, cite studies, and share stats to drive a point home. These help build trust.

We’re coming across this topic frequently in news articles, and it’s the subject of many online debates. Is handwriting about to be declared dead, and a useless skill? Is touch typing the future – and only – way of communicating non-verbally?

Teachers, parents, and students are all wondering if learning cursive is relevant in a tech-driven world. This gives rise to a more pressing question: what should students learn first, touch typing or handwriting?

Current changes in education are giving precedence to touch typing and effectively moving handwriting skills to the backseat. Is this wrong, or should it be called smart adaptability? Students are now expected to use their keyboards to do research, complete assignments, and take exams – and this leaves handwriting instruction behind. Justifiably, students need to learn how to touch type in order to effectively handle their school homework and in-class assignments. Touch typing is the future. As gadgets and technologies make their way into the classroom, it’s only natural that schools want to prioritize keyboarding skills over handwriting.

However, this doesn’t mean we should rule out handwriting altogether. Handwriting is a deeply complex motor skill that’s cognitively challenging and essential to master. Handwriting involves several brain faculties at once, including sensory, motor, and language centers of the brain, and of course our senses of hearing and sight and touch. Considering the Common Core standards — that the majority of U.S states have adopted — students need to be proficient touch typists by the time they complete the 3rd grade.

This of course means that students need to formally learn how to touch type in class. This doesn’t indicate, however, that it should entirely replace handwriting instruction. The two are equally essential skills. No matter how pervasive text-language and keyboard-based devices will become in the next 20 years, handwriting will still be required for things like signatures, paying by check, writing thank you notes, and jotting down grocery lists. And of course, there’s the possibility of being creative and expressive through cursive writing.

Yes, the “for handwriting” argument is one that is generally imbued with nostalgia, and for some people even a fear of something so familiar going out of popularity.

It could also be that the rise of tablet use could mean that not even physical keyboards will survive the obsession with touch-screen devices, but isn’t handwriting a uniquely human skill? Given that, it’s not something we should let go extinct.

Writing skills, including cursive writing, are part and parcel of language acquisition and mastery. Perhaps our brains are agile enough to adapt to a new channel of language learning where writing is replaced with touch typing, but then would people be able to read cursive or sign a legal contract if they’ve never written using pen and paper before? It’s obvious that at least for the foreseeable future, handwriting is here to stay.

It’s that time of the year again! Are you ready to do your holiday shopping for your friends, relatives, and loved ones?

“Gift cards for everyone would be an excellent idea,” you might think. Everyone gets to buy what they want from a brand they love, right? But a gift card implies that you haven’t put much thought into the gift – or the person you’re giving that gift to. Buying a gift card might say, “I was too lazy to even bother look for a gift, so here’s some free money. Oh, and Merry Christmas!” This is not the true meaning of a gift. Gift giving is about taking the time and effort to make a meaningful, thoughtful gift to a loved one.

A Book

For those friends and family members who love curling up in their book nest with a cup of tea, books make an easy but entirely appropriate gift. Whether you choose a New York Times best-seller or a classic title is entirely up to the recipient’s taste, so think about what you’ve seen them reading before you buy.

The Gift of Better Orthography

Do you have a colleague who is getting a bad reputation for their misspelled memos? Give them a helping hand with a gift of spelling software like Ultimate Spelling™. No more embarrassing misspellings in emails, reports, and PowerPoint presentations - you coworker will be a friend for life.

A Rich(er) Vocabulary

Communication is a vital part of daily life. So for children and young adults whose vocabulary could use a little push, why not offer them Ultimate Vocabulary™ by eReflect? This software will allow them to expand and make their vocabulary richer and more relevant and will eventually help them become better communicators, negotiators, and writers. This is a good gift for someone about to graduate from school because it will help them get the vocabulary they need to succeed in the job market.

Pro Keyboarding Skills

Do you know someone who is struggling with modern technology? Maybe they can’t figure out how to video chat with you on Hangouts, or they take forever to reply to your Facebook messages because their typing skills are poor to non-existent. Ultimate Typing™ would be the perfect gift for that person, because it will help them “level up” their keyboarding skills in no time. Of course, that might mean you’ll be getting texts and messages from them more often, but you can handle that, right?

A Visit

Sometimes a gift doesn’t have to be something tangible. Pay a visit to your grandmother, have lunch with a friend from college, or invite someone you haven’t seen in years to your Christmas party. The gift of kindness and love are truly priceless!

An Extravagant Pampering Gift

A pampering, extravagant gift is always appropriate for those special people in your life. Your hard-working mother, your significant other, your best friend – no matter who that person, do your homework and offer them a gift they will be raving about for weeks to come. It could be a spa session, a two-day mini trip, or anything the person you have in mind will fancy.

Gourmet Pleasures For the Foodies

From artisanal jams made with vodka to one-of-a-kind tea blends and limited-edition vintage wines, offer your foodie friends a mouthwatering experience they can Instagram to their heart’s content.

Whether you choose to get gifts that expand your friends’ career options or their waistlines is up to you! There are plenty of compelling gift ideas to choose from. Don’t go for run-of-the-mill, uninspiring gift cards. Instead, offer a thoughtful gift and get the joy of seeing faces lit up with excitement when they unwrap them come Christmas.